Twice Upon a Marigold (7 page)

Besides, they had Olympia to think about.

"She's up to no good already. I know it," Marigold said.

"No doubt about it," Chris said. "And I'm thinking she still wants to be the queen. All by herself."

"You think papa and I are in danger again?"

"I'm sure of it. Especially once she finds out Swithbert wants to unite our two kingdoms. She's not big on sharing."

"We don't
have
to combine the kingdoms."

"That still won't protect Swithbert. Besides, I think combining the kingdoms is a good idea. Anything that unites people instead of dividing them seems valuable."

Marigold sighed. "I agree. So what are we going to do about her?"

"What about those pals of yours? Those elves and sorcerers and all? Can they help?"

"Hmmm. Maybe. I'll send out a few p-mails and see."

Then, because telling him jokes had been part of their getting to know each other, even though he didn't always think they were very funny, she decided to offer him one. "Christian, do you know how long Cleopatra lived?"

"Huh?"

"Cleopatra. Do you know how long she lived?"

"Uh—I don't know. Maybe forty years?"

"No, silly. The answer is, all her life."

"Oh. Is this one of your jokes?"

"You couldn't tell it was a joke?"

"I thought it was a real question. A serious question."

"You really couldn't tell it was a joke?"

"I told you I couldn't. Are you suggesting I'm stupid?"

"I just thought it was obvious."

"Obviously not."

"Are you saying I'm not a good joke teller?"

"I didn't say that. But joke telling
is
an art."

"And I'm not a good artist?"

"Well, I didn't know it was a joke, did I?"

"Maybe that's your fault, not mine."

And suddenly, they were back where they had been before, without quite knowing how it had happened. It was as if Olympia's return had brought poisoned air that invaded their brains and turned them into the worst versions of themselves.

Christian reached across the table and took Marigold's hand. "We have to stop this. We're supposed to be living happily ever after."

She clung to his hand. "Maybe this
is
happily ever after. Maybe happy people still have disagreements."

"I don't doubt that," Chris said. "But the ones
we're having are so stupid. Shouldn't we be disagreeing about more important things?"

"I think Olympia has something to do with it. I think during that year her memory was gone and she was somebody else—somebody nicer—all her bad qualities piled up and got stronger because she wasn't using them. Now she's taken them back and they're bigger and more forceful than they used to be, and they're loose in our air. It's like we're inhaling a little bit of Olympia's personality with every breath."

Chris cupped his hand over his mouth. "What a disgusting thought. But maybe you're right. That would make me feel better about these stupid arguments. I don't like thinking that we're being stupid all by ourselves, though I suppose that's possible. And if you're right, we're going to need some major help to get things back to normal."

"I'll get busy on those p-mails," Marigold said.

E
D AND
S
WITHBERT
sat in front of the fire, ignoring the fact that summer heat had arrived when Olympia had and a fire was unnecessary. There is something safe and comforting about sitting by a fire, and they needed to feel both.

"Olympia means to be sole ruler," Swithbert said glumly, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. "No
matter who's in the way. Meaning me, and probably Marigold."

"What else is news to me?" Ed said, unbuttoning his jacket.

"I can't let that happen. It would be the worst thing possible for the entire kingdom."

"How you gonna stop her?"

Swithbert shook his head. "I don't know. I've never been good at stopping her from doing anything. She's like a charging bull. Or cow, I suppose. How do you stop one of those?"

"Spears. Arrows. Trip wires. Maces. Broadaxes. Cutlasses. Halberds. Pikes. Hatchets—"

"Okay, okay, Ed. But you know I'm not going to use any of those on her. I can't."

"Maybe we can find somebody who can."

"Oh, Ed. You don't mean that. Anyway, you know I can't do that, either."

"I'm not sure I don't mean it. But I get that you're a rock stuck in a hard place. Can't live with her, can't eliminate her."

"Things were so good while she was gone. If only we could figure out a way to make her go away once more."

"I could push her into the river again. I'd be glad to."

Swithbert sighed. "She's my problem, not yours."

Sedgewick came into the room. "Forgive me for interrupting, sire," he said, "but something odd is happening down in the dungeon. My, it's awfully warm in here." He wiped his brow with his green-trimmed hankie.

"What's happening in the dungeon?" Swithbert asked.

"The queen's ordered them emptied. All of Sir Edric's collections are being shoveled out of the cells and left in a disordered heap to be disposed of later."

"
What!
" Ed squealed. "Okay. Now she's
my
problem, too." He ran out of the sitting room and through the labyrinthine corridors of the castle until he came to the steep stone staircase that led to the dungeon. He'd spent some time in there, thanks to Olympia, so it seemed poetic justice (or prose justice, in Ed's mind) that he'd been able to store his collections there when he moved out of the crystal cave-castle so that Christian and Marigold could move in. He'd spent years accumulating those forest-found items and every one was precious to him.

He hustled down the steps yelling, "Stop! Stop!" even before he could see anybody doing anything.

In the dungeon four of Rollo's men were working away with big shovels, flinging Ed's carefully sorted items (one cell for left shoes, one cell for right shoes, one cell for forks, one cell for books, two cells for weapons, etc.) into one big pile at the darkest end of the dungeon's passageway. That was bad enough, but worse, he could see that the soldiers had helped themselves to some of the finest specimens, setting them aside to take away once the cleanout was finished.

"Stop!" he yelled again. And once again the soldiers ignored him. "Those are mine!"

"Not anymore," one of the soldiers said, flinging a shovelful right over Ed's head, into the messy conglobation beyond him.

"Why are you doing this? Those things have been there for a year."

"Queen Olympia's orders. She wants to use the dungeon again."

That was not good news.

Ed could see there was no stopping the soldiers, but at least he could stay and keep an eye on them so they didn't steal any more of what belonged to him. Well, it had belonged to somebody else once, but it belonged to him now.

Once the soldiers had finished and left, Ed cast a melancholy look at the mountain of his possessions languishing in the murky black hole of Beaurivage's dungeon, then went upstairs to tell Swithbert what was going on.

Lazy Susan sat stewing in the scullery. Waiting on somebody as bad-tempered and demanding as Olympia had been no fun, that was for sure, but scrubbing out kettles in which dragons' heads had been boiled was even less fun. Yet, she didn't want to go back to Granolah. Not without something to show for her stay in Beaurivage. It wasn't everybody who got to live in a castle and rub elbows with royalty. Lazy Susan wanted to be able to tell Beauty some stories about this adventure—and not just ones about being yelled at by Olympia, and about being up to her elbows in dragon fat.

She needed a better job.

Mrs. Clover came into the scullery and looked down at Lazy Susan sitting idly on a stool with her hands between her knees.

"How are those kettles coming along?" she asked pointedly.

"They're repulsive," Lazy Susan said.

"That's true," Mrs. Clover agreed. "But getting them clean is a necessity. And a great accomplishment. Something to be proud of."

"How would you know?" Lazy Susan muttered sulkily.

"Because that's how I started out here at the castle," Mrs. Clover said. "I was a scullery maid scrubbing out repulsive kettles."

"I don't believe you."

"It's true. Ask anybody."

"So how did you get to be head housekeeper? Who did you know who helped you out?"

"I didn't know anybody except the other scullery maids, and the footmen. But I worked hard and did the best job I could and didn't complain even when I was dead tired and my fingers were bleeding from the scrubbing. And the head housekeeper noticed. Somebody always notices when you're doing a good job, even if they don't say anything. They notice when
you're doing a sloppy, haphazard job, too." And she indicated the kettle in front of Lazy Susan.

"What happens then?" Lazy Susan asked. She was experiencing an unfamiliar sensation. She didn't even know what to call it. Always before she'd been content to avoid effort of any kind, and she hadn't cared who knew it. But the things Mrs. Clover had said to her made her feel ... maybe ashamed? Or chastened? Or embarrassed? Whatever it was, it wasn't a good feeling.

"Well, if you do a lousy job for long enough, what happens is, you get fired. Then you don't have a job. And most people need their jobs."

"I never have before."

"Why is that?" Mrs. Clover asked.

"Well—" Somehow now she didn't want to mention Beauty.

"Is it because you're Sleeping Beauty's half sister?" Mrs. Clover was smarter than you might think at first glance. "People do you favors because they think you'll get them in good with her and her prince?"

"I—maybe." She was regarding Mrs. Clover with new respect.

The housekeeper shook her head. "Poor Susan. Beauty is busy living her own full life and you're
wasting yours. Don't you want a life of your own? One that's not stuck to hers?"

"Even if it involves a lot of dragon fat?" Lazy Susan asked.

"You can be sure there's something in your sister's life that's the equivalent of dragon fat. Maybe she hates formal dinners, or having to spend hours on harpsichord lessons, or embroidering with her ladies-in-waiting when she'd rather be outside digging in the garden in a simple country girl's dress. No matter how good somebody else's life looks from the outside, you can be sure there's something about it you wouldn't want to have in your own life."

Lazy Susan didn't want to believe this. She'd envied Beauty's circumstances for such a long time, she didn't like thinking that maybe they weren't so enviable, and that she'd wasted a lot of energy on something so unnecessary. But Mrs. Clover's words had been delivered with such surety that it was hard not to think there was at least
some
truth to them.

"But what you've got in your life right now," Mrs. Clover went on, "is a lot of dirty kettles. I'll leave you to decide what to do about them." And she left the scullery.

Lazy Susan sat, looking and deciding. To scrub dragon fat or not to scrub dragon fat—that was the question.

Mr. Lucasa delivered an armload of dresses to Olympia's quarters. He was met at the door by Miranda, who had been Olympia's personal maid before she'd floated down the river.

"She's on one of her rampages this morning," Miranda whispered. "You might not want to go in there. I can take the dresses if you want."

"My work," Mr. Lucasa said with a note of pride in his voice. "My rampage."

"Don't say I didn't try to protect you, then," Miranda said, opening the door wide.

Mr. Lucasa could hear Olympia before he could see her. He might not have been able to understand every word, but he definitely got the drift. She was mad at almost everybody for the way the kingdom and the castle had been run for the past year and she was going to fix things if she had to put half her subjects in the dungeon.

Miranda had been right to warn him, but she'd underestimated his ability to handle somebody having a tantrum. They just had to be ignored. It was so simple a tactic it's no wonder people didn't want to believe it; they persisted in thinking solutions needed to be complicated.

He took the dresses into her sitting room and began laying them out across the settees and armchairs while Olympia roared on to a cowering Sedgewick.

"And the gardens are a disgrace! There's scum in the reflecting pool, a blight on one of the rosebushes, and I even saw a unicorn loose in the orchard, eating the cherries right off the tree!"

"The pool was scheduled for cleaning last month, but it was raining, Your Majesty. And Razi loves cherries." Sedgewick quavered when Olympia stopped for breath. "The king said it was all right. He's so fond of that unicorn."

"And Swithbert!" Her voice went up a few more
decibels. "Why isn't he wearing his crown at all times? How is that incompetent valet Denby allowed to let him get away with looking like some old vagabond? You
are
head butler, you know. You're supposed to keep things running perfectly smoothly—and I can see that you haven't. You know I've had the dungeon cleaned out. There's plenty of room down there now."

Sedgewick gulped so loudly that Mr. Lucasa could hear him. He continued smoothing out the dresses. "I have your gowns," he said quietly.

"Can't you see I'm—" Olympia looked sharply at the array of finery. "Those are
my
gowns? The ones you took away a few days ago?"

Mr. Lucasa nodded.

She came over to inspect them, fingering the new trimmings, checking how the necklines had been altered and the skirts draped. "This sleeve," she said. "It needs to be an inch shorter. And this waistband—too wide. And ... uh ..."

He could tell she was looking for something else with which to find fault and failing.

"Who helped you with these?" she finally asked. "I'm quite sure it wasn't that do-nothing Lazy Susan."

"Mrs. Clover sent me to Mrs. Vienna."

"She's the chief seamstress now," Sedgewick put
in timorously. "She's new since you ... left, Your Majesty."

"And she helped you?" Olympia asked Mr. Lucasa.